Baby, It's Cold Outside!

How did I spend the first snowstorm of Fall '09? Well, the baby woke up early, as usual, at 7:45am. About 2.25 hours earlier than I was ready to wake up. But I was tired of half sleeping while he made his strange, new sound... It's not really a cry and not really a gurgle sound either... sounds like an old car trying to start up. Or better yet, an old car in a cartoon. So I got up and poured myself a cup of Coconut Cream Coffee Mate with a dash of coffee... God, I love that stuff!

Grant and I headed for the basement because Kelly was embarking on the longest day of his professional life to date and we needed to be scarce. Grant tore through a bottle while he and I watched a small portion of the Today Show. I still have a mild crush on Matt Lauer after all these years so I like to check him out each morning for fun. Shortly after our descent, Jack woke up. I brought him down and took his breakfast order, as I do each morning... raisin bran in a bowl, with a spoon, no milk. Then he proceeds to eat only the raisins while he leaves a bowl full of bran, which I always throw right back into the box. It kind of sucks for the person that gets the last bowl!

I started to tackle a few of the days priorities while my children were being simultaneously raised by PBS. Momaha.com was launched so I was eager to see the site live! If you haven't heard, I am now part of the momaha.com team and will be blogging every third Friday. I'm really excited about the new "post," pun intended. I did some other less exciting things like laundry, decorating the tree, sorting through medical bills, calling customer service at Blue Cross Blue Shield.

I wanted to make something fun for lunch but I seemed to be missing one ingredient for every dish I considered making. In the end, I made a very tasty quiche Florentine with bacon bits... NOT BACOS, just precooked, salad topping bacon and Swiss deli slices diced - yes you can dice cheese slices! Luckily, I had one Pillsbury pie crust waiting in the fridge, as well. Don't mistake me for a "foodie" because I usually just cook because I don't have a personal chef or out of boredom. Yesterday, it was both.

As I was searching for the aforementioned ingredients, I noticed we had about 1/3 of a bottle of champagne and a few slurps of orange juice. Is it too early on a week day for a Mimosa? Do you have to have an event, or better yet a weekend for a Mimosa? It's not like I was going to be driving anywhere... it was almost nap time. In the end, I decided not to indulge but today is another day of NOT leaving the house and spending EVERY waking minute with my 2 boys. I may consider it more seriously this afternoon.

After lunch, my 3-year-old usually takes a marathon nap. We lay down in his bed, read a couple of books, tell the story about Goldlilocks and the three bears for 10, 000th time and then drift off to sleep. Usually, I'm following him right into dreamland but not today... the baby took his own marathon nap all morning and into the early afternoon so about the time one was entering REM, the other was screaming for his next meal!

Needless to say, I never got a nap. Daddy worked super late so I didn't get dinner either. The gods smiled on us around dinner time, however, when the neighbors called to see if we'd like to join them for the original "Rudolph" Christmas special and some snacks. We bundled up and trudged through the back yard to our destination. They had invited some other neighbors too and all the kids camped out on the pull out bed in their family room. Afterward, the kids ate ice cream and homemade chocolate chip cookies. The adults had egg nog, coffee and kaluha along with a pre-Christmas Toast. They sent us home with a gift bag full of homeade salad dressing and meat marinade.

As I write this, I'm thinking to myself... it really is the simple things in life. Good friends, snow days, Christmas lights and a little ingenuity in the kitchen when your pantry is not half full. I'm actually really looking forward to today's Snow Day.